Unknown Diners

Chapter Sixty-Three

Lorne looked at Deputy Commissioner Singh. "It might be best to begin by meeting with key people from each department for twenty or thirty minutes in turn, enough to get everybody started, then we can freelance as needed. Also, we need faster connections; tethering to our phones is a bit slow."

Singh stood. "Hopgood, you get a schedule put together. Let's get going on this. Who can set-up a wifi for them?" Three hands went up. "Good, Stevens, you see to that." He stepped over and shook Lorne's hand, then Catherine's. "We've worked together several times, Lorne. It's good to finally meet you in person. Let Hopgood there know if you need anything."

Lorne nodded to Singh. "We'd appreciate it if you thanked Denise... Staff Sergeant O'Brien for us. It's her initiative that got this thing rolling faster."

Singh looked along the table again. "Hopgood, you know Staff Sergeant O'Brien?"

"Yes, Sir. She's leading one of the Market Enforcement teams... Commercial Fraud, she'll be fully involved with this."

"Have her come see me."

"I'll have it arranged, Sir."

Singh glanced at the wall clock as he turned back to Catherine and Lorne. "Lunch time shortly. I would be honoured if you joined me."

Seeing Lorne's nod, he continued. "Great... I'd love a broad overview of this. Let the departments deal with the details." He motioned for Hopgood to join them.

"Yes, Sir."

"Grab Ferguson. Organise sandwiches for five in my office for twelve thirty." He laughed. "Have them tell the cafeteria they're for restaurant reviewers, maybe we can get something upscale for a change."

"Sir?"

"Joking, Hopgood, only joking."

He turned back to Catherine and Lorne. "Quite the game they're playing; manipulating the reviewers."

Catherine nodded. "The sad part is that many of the reviewers are playing their game. They're turning a blind eye to reality."

"The problem is that reviews are only opinions." Lorne ran his fingers through his hair and shrugged. "The valid ones, though, are unbiased, based on a depth of knowledge and experience, both aesthetic and technical, and importantly, on a proven ability to discern quality. It's a subtle thing. How does one review a reviewer? Is this new marketing approach fair or fraudulent?"

"It appears to be misrepresentation," Singh said. "Similar to bait and switch, to false advertising."

"But the restaurants aren't doing the reviews." Lorne shrugged his shoulders. "What they're doing is wining and dining the reviewers and offering them easy tools to write and illustrate their reviews."

"That's the slick defence lawyer's argument." Singh shook his head. "The courts will likely accept it, even though everyone knows it's fallacious. Everyone but the letter of the law."

"That's the balancing act they're playing; teetering on the edge of legality." Lorne shrugged. "You must admit, it's clever."

Catherine spoke up, "Yes, okay, but what about the sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Zomato, DineHere... All those patron review sites? Those are filled with glowing reviews of awful places. I would think that's a big part of Frick's marketing — flooding all those sites with a continuing stream of creative laudatory crap."

Lorne pursed his lips and slowly nodded. "I wonder if Frick is off on an unsupervised tangent with this. It seems to be much less well thought through."

"Our internet teams can dig into that, Lorne. They're good at finding common sources and repeat patterns." Singh glanced again at the clock. "I have a meeting in two minutes. See you in my office at twelve thirty." He signalled to Hopgood, nodded, turned and left.

Hopgood came over and introduced himself. "Have you any questions?"

Catherine pointed at his shoulder insignia. "I'm curious about the badges. I always get lost above sergeant. What's the crown and diamonds?"

He glanced down at his epaulettes, then smiled at her. "That's Chief Superintendent."

"And the crossed swords Singh is wearing?"

"That's actually a sword crossed with its scabbard. It's Deputy Commissioner. There are only seven of them in the RCMP." He turned and scanned the group. "Ferguson!"

"Sir!"

He motioned him over. "We may as well get together now; you'll be joining us for lunch shortly. She's curious about the insignias, so we're having a show and tell." He smiled at Catherine. "His crown and single diamond indicate Superintendent." He scanned the room again, then pointed. "There, the crown, that's Inspector."

They all shook hands and chatted. Ferguson quickly swung the conversation to the Hypocritic Diner theme. Hearing the laughter, others came over to join the group, and they added to the anecdotes. "My son has four dinner reservations this week. He's hoping the scam lasts long enough to get at least one freebie. He's praying it's the mystery dinner place."

Catherine gave Bourgeois her best attempt at a puzzled look as she replied to him. "It seems we've missed all the excitement of this thing. We've been too busy being murdered."

There was silence. A long silence, until she said, "I wanted to suggest there's much more involved with this than dinner." She scanned the faces again. "In the last two days, I've seen a huge amount of sick stuff on the net connected to this." She looked around. "You men might feel this more intensely than we women do, but I'm sure that threats, images and videos of penis amputations and references to displaying the severed parts in trophy cases bring cringes to us all."

After another long silence, she glanced at the clock. "We should refresh for lunch."